


Touch Me, Midas

by CircularShades



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Assumed Relationship, Body Horror, Breathplay, Coercion, Crowley Was Raphael Before He Fell (Good Omens), Cutting used as a metaphor, Established Relationship, Fear, Fear Play, Hair-pulling, Handcuffs, Hate Sex, Kidnapping, M/M, Making an Effort (Good Omens), Prayer, Religion Kink, Self-harming language, Sexual Coercion, Sort of even if it's never said explicitly, Transformation, Wings, kind of monsterfucky tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-06-02 08:01:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19437268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CircularShades/pseuds/CircularShades
Summary: Gabriel wants to see just how much an old friend has changed. Crowley has his own agenda. (No archive warnings have been selected, but mind the tags.)





	Touch Me, Midas

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the song "My Ordinary Life" by The Living Tombstone, which is some excellent angsty-Crowley feelings if you're inclined toward such things.
> 
> Thank you [geekoncaffeine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekoncaffeine) for the beta, and the Ineffable Pounding group chat for the idea of Crowley in handcuffs, which is where this whole thing started from.

White light, pure and almost blindingly bright even through his sunglasses. Crowley rolled his head to one side, felt the yield of a soft, thick duvet against the side of his face.... also against the backs of his shoulders, his torso, and his legs. Blurred shapes shifted and resolved into a white canopy above his head. It was held up by rods made of silver, and the light — which was everywhere, seemingly without source — made it shine.

He was, for most beings' functional definition of the term, naked, though there was a sort of garment covering parts of his body. Golden straps crisscrossed his chest, and a couple more extended down to a garter belt that circled Crowley's hips and both of his thighs. There was some sort of power on it, he could smell it, but he couldn't place the scent.

He heard metallic ringing, felt pressure against the bones in his ankles and wrists, and looked up. Handcuffs, chained to the bedposts. The same shining silver, delicate-looking but — he pulled experimentally — quite strong.

"You're awake!"

Crowley let out a groan as his head flopped back against the duvet. "What the _fuck_ , Gabriel."

"Comfy?" Gabriel was at the foot of the bed, framed by the canopy and, from Crowley's perspective, his own legs. Gabriel would have been staring right into Crowley's 'business end,' as it were, if Crowley had had any 'business' at the moment. "Sorry about the cuffs, but I had to make sure you weren't gonna —" he made a motion with his fists, as if squaring up for a fight, "— demon out right away."

"Is this Heaven?"

"We're safe." Gabriel started making his way around the side of the bed. He was dressed down, by his standards: grey slacks, a crisp white dress shirt, and a pale beige scarf, stylishly looped around his neck. "Promise."

Crowley felt a scowl pulling at his lip. _Was_ this Heaven? Before this, he'd been asleep. He'd had some deep slumbers over the centuries, but if he had started getting kidnapped, he'd like to think he would've woken up for it. He craned his neck to try and look out one of the picture windows, but managed to see only sky.

He was tabling the Heaven question now. Looking at what he knew. There was no one here but himself and Gabriel, and he was chained to the bed like the entertainment at an Eyes Wide Shut party. Well then — he might as well, he thought, call Gabriel's bluff, so far as he saw it.

As Gabriel sat on the edge of the mattress, Crowley gave in to the weight of his ankle cuffs, let his thighs fall open, and made an effort. Nothing too fancy, just enough to get the point across. A decently thick uncut cock and a frankly pedestrian set of balls sprouted between his legs. Gabriel didn't look, but he'd obviously _seen_ , by the way his eyes crinkled in an exasperated smile. He lifted one hand and delicately stabbed a finger down through the air.

"Could you... put that thing away, Crowley?"

"I refuse to have a serious conversation with you like this. If you've got something to let out of your system, I'd rather we talked afterwards. Or not at all."

"To let out of my system," Gabriel echoed, his eyes popping wide open. "You're the one _manifesting genitals_."

"You _handcuffed_ me _to a bed_. With _no clothes on_." Crowley hissed back before switching gears entirely: nodding like ah, no, never mind, it made perfect sense. "Oh, this is just how Heaven treats prisoners now, is it? I know for a fact that —" _you don't_ , he almost said, which would have been a terrible thing to say, because then he might have to explain _how_ he knew, and while he could probably think of something, there was still time to pull back. Crowley tripped over his own tongue for only a second before concluding: "— Sandalphon wouldn't stand for it. Why the harness?"

"Oh." Like flipping a light switch, Gabriel's smile had turned dazzlingly bright. "That's functional. Miracle'd so you can't go all the way reptile, slither your way out of bondage."

Right — the bondage. Crowley flexed his arms, causing another rattling chime of silver-against-silver. "If we're gonna talk, can you get rid of the cuffs? You know I won't risk bringing all of Heaven down on me by trying to break out of here. Haven't got the energy." He watched Gabriel's expression tighten with hesitance. "Come on. I'll get rid of mine if you get rid of yours. The cock for the cuffs." He wriggled his hips lazily, let the appendage flop around a little. "Unless there really is something you're after, here..."

Gabriel's eyes lowered to Crowley's languid thigh.

"I _do_ think we should talk." He lifted a hand, considering — then smacked it down, solid. "But."

"But." Crowley echoed, letting his tongue rest behind his teeth after the 't.' "I happen to know you've had a very rough go of it lately."

Gabriel's eyes flashed up to meet Crowley's shades. "Because of you."

"Oh, _me_. I hardly did anything."

"And Aziraphale."

"Mm. I hear his attempted execution didn't go to plan." Crowley relaxed his leg a little bit further, encouraging Gabriel to let his hand wander. Gabriel's eyes dropped back to his hand before he obliged: sliding his palm upward until it hit the strap around one thigh, curling his grip a touch stronger. Crowley felt his physical body reacting to the touch, heat starting to coil in his groin. His conscious mind itched, rebellious at the idea of being turned on under these conditions, even if Gabriel's hand _was_ strong and soft and felt molded to his thigh. "Couldn't take your frustration out on him, so then you thought — kidnap a demon, have yourself a nice bit of torture to take the edge off. You should've gone with Hastur. I can tell you from personal experience, he screams like anything."

"I don't want. _Hastur_." Gabriel bit through the name. The gentle stroke of his fingertips against the garter strap was a contrast to the edge in his voice. "And I don't want to torture a demon."

"Then what'd you want me for?"

"Do you remember the 3rd century?" Gabriel's fingers did a neat little tap on the strap. Crowley felt a jolt of nerves.

"Yeah — the whole... Rome-Persia thing. Where was that?"

"Edessa. Lovely place in Upper Mesopotamia. I've been thinking about it quite frequently. Ever since I heard a little something through the celestial grapevine." Gabriel's fingers stopped tracing the straps of the garter belt and splayed out, once again, over Crowley's thigh. He leaned in, smiled like he was sharing a secret. "Demons don't bathe in holy water."

Panic pierced Crowley's chest, sharp and insistent. _He knows — or he's close to working it out._ He had to swallow to keep the thoughts from showing on his face. "I can't explain it any more than you can."

"The Almighty does work in mysterious ways."

They were close enough to just catch the scent of one another now. Gabriel smelled... well. Divine. It made Crowley's lips tingle with a desire for contact. The warm hand curled under his thigh had his cock starting to harden — the blessed thing, once conjured, often seemed to have a mind of its own. On top of all _that,_ the panic of what Gabriel might know was still trying to get his attention.

He _couldn't_ know, Crowley tried rather desperately to convince himself, so he could keep from doing or saying something utterly stupid. If he knew, Crowley reasoned, he wouldn't be reminiscing about the 3rd Century. The archangel had never been one to mince words.

"We really _should_ talk first."

Gabriel's hand slipped from his leg, and Crowley felt the cuffs disappear from his wrists and ankles.

The 3rd Century. 260 A.D. That had been a tough time for the angels, too, and a busy one for a demon — the Roman Empire being consumed with chaos, and a small bunch of scrappy Greeks, Egyptians, and Persians making up the bulk of God's mortal followers. They'd both been frustrated in those days: Gabriel by the hectic nature of his work, Crowley by the tedium of his. Back then, he hadn't really started getting creative.

He'd been surprised to come across the archangel in Edessa, and even more surprised when Gabriel greeted him with a name that was neither Crowley _nor_ Crawley. They'd wound up having a remarkably candid conversation in the calm before the armies of Rome and Persia clashed; although nobody got undressed during the course of it, Crowley had walked away with his hair a mess, an ache in his scalp, and a few sticky spots on the inside of his robes.

There'd been a handful of other encounters. Not many. None so intense. Gabriel came to Earth infrequently enough as it was, and Crowley — he'd thought of what happened the first time as more _his_ weakness, rather than the angel's.

Crowley dismissed his body of any need for genitals and sat up in the bed, pulled the duvet over his lower half for good measure. He started fussing with the straps of the harness Gabriel had put on him, seeking out the clasps that held it in place.

Gabriel was still watching him. Crowley, in turn, watched as Gabriel's nostrils flared in a delicate sniff. "You still _smell_ like one of them."

Crowley undid the strap around one of his thighs. ”Couldn’t have been too smelly back in the 3rd Century."

"I just couldn't believe it was you!"

"Well." Crowley tilted his head, shooting off a frown. "Think you know someone, then a couple thousand years go by."

"We were never supposed to change."

"But we did." Crowley pulled the unfastened harness over his head, let it fall to one side on the mattress. "And not just me, not just demons. All of us. Look at you. You never used to be so cruel."

Gabriel's expression turned serious. "I do my job."

"Aziraphale told me what you said to him." Because of course he would have, if it had been Aziraphale there. It gave Crowley enough of an excuse to spit Gabriel's words back at him: "Shut your stupid mouth and _die already_?"

"He betrayed Heaven."

"You made it personal."

Crowley wanted Gabriel to feel the way he was being stared down, even through the glasses. Let him try, Crowley thought, to say _that_ wasn't personal. Silence drew tight between them until Gabriel looked away.

"Humility is a virtue. You're right. I was under a lot of pressure. That comment was out of line." With his hands folded in his lap and his eyes downcast, he was a too-perfect picture of contrition — until he dropped it, looked up with another of those clandestine smiles. "I've been thinking about this whole holy water thing. And I've been thinking about that night. You were so beautiful, even then —"

And he said a name. More than a name. A memory. It pushed Crowley's sense of self backwards out of his body, to a distance that was measured in thought rather than miles or light-years. He felt his body go still, and he didn't seem to be fully in control of it.

When Crowley returned to the room, mentally speaking, Gabriel was holding out both hands, palms upturned.

"May I?"

Crowley gave a short nod. Gabriel leaned forward and delicately removed the glasses from Crowley's face. Crowley allowed himself one slow blink as his eyes started adjusting to the light. After that, he made sure Gabriel could take in their full inhuman appearance.

"Still Fallen,” Crowley said. “Whatever else I am now, it doesn't change that."

"I'd still like to try again." Gabriel’s eyes searched Crowley's face, and his fingers trailed through Crowley's hair at the side of his head, brushed the ends, recalling a time when there was more for them to run through. "Would you?"

Crowley shook his head, shaking off Gabriel's fingers like errant flies. "There's no point. God doesn't turn demons back into angels. It's never gonna happen. And if it does, it's not gonna happen to me, because I don't want it."

"What you want," Gabriel said, gentle yet firm, "is mercy. A sense of belonging. Love. Heaven's love? Is real. Disavow us all you like, but that love's existence is undeniable."

Crowley looked away, toward a wall. Something about this room was trying to get his attention. If the room were a person, it would've been waving a hand in the air and trying to shout something across a very large space. Crowley couldn't tell what it was trying to say. He was getting too distracted by what _Gabriel_ was trying to say. He'd felt close to something that night, and had hated himself at the time, but only because he'd been trying so hard to be a demon. He didn't, in fact, care that much about trying to be a demon anymore...

What the hell. Might as well try and get some closure.

"All right, angel." Crowley sneered on the end of the word, because he didn't mean _his_ angel, just _an_ angel. Definitely not an angel who remembered his old name, or touched Crowley like he still remembered what his body felt like under those robes. _Definitely_ not the angel who had, not that long ago, tried to have him executed. "Show me the love of Heaven."

* * *

Many holy things hurt to some degree. Holy water. Consecrated ground. Invocations of banishment, when spoken by a true believer.

Prayer — ordinary prayer, when spoken or thought by an ordinary human — was between that human and God, and of no consequence to a demon. Prayers of Heavenly forgiveness and angelic memory offered _for_ a demon, articulated with a celestial tongue... well, it wasn't surprising that it would have some effect.

Maybe it felt different to other demons. Crowley couldn’t say. He couldn’t say whether any other demon would’ve subjected themselves to this to find out. Certainly, he'd never asked any of them.

He was in Gabriel's lap, sort of, the duvet serving as a barrier between their bodies, while Gabriel petted and pulled at Crowley's hair and whispered prayers against his skin. Scales shivered over the spots where Gabriel's words fell, before smoothing back into human flesh. Crowley's hair lengthened and curled between Gabriel's fingers until it was tumbling over his shoulders, draping between his shoulder-blades. His back rippled with too many ribs, and there were prickling spots along his forearms and just above his cheekbones; with only a little more convincing, he was certain that those spots could sprout extra sets of eyes. Crowley didn't know whether his physical body was breaking down, or trying to evolve.

Just like in 260 A.D., it hurt like a scalpel: a clean, sharp slice followed by flowing warmth and a sense of being so _close_ to something divine. Gabriel whispered appeals to the Almighty against Crowley's throat. Crowley shivered and lifted his chin further, inviting the cold rasp of the words against his skin, the way his blood swelled with heat in the aftermath.

"You'll have to wash the stench of me out of your sheets later, hm?" He asked, as Gabriel’s lips brushed the skin over his trapezius. "Take a long, hot shower?"

"You know, _you_ don't have to talk."

"Now that sounds like Heaven — _ugh_ ," Crowley groaned, in response to a startlingly hard tug on his hair. Gabriel's opposite arm encircled his waist, and the prayers traveled down to the hollow of his neck, cut through his sternum. Crowley's body was still intact, but he _felt_ sliced open, his insides aching with holy ecstasy. Every time the pain ebbed back, heat and want, the need to get _closer_ , flowed in to take its place. Crowley's fingernails became blood-red claws, then ordinary fingernails again, then painted themselves solid black, the color seeping out onto his fingertips. The flesh between his legs quivered and parted and reshaped itself, arranging nerves into sensitive clusters that started to throb with pleasure when Crowley bore down on Gabriel's thigh, through the blanket. His black wings unfurled and bent upward toward the canopy, as if being pulled back. Gabriel was murmuring something about the spark of holy light, about tending to the birthplaces of stars. Crowley felt something else shifting inside him, opening, creating an empty space where the heat inspired by Gabriel's words and fingers could spin and tighten and, eventually, burst.

In Edessa, they'd stayed relatively discreet: the hush in Gabriel's voice had been more pronounced, and Crowley had struggled to keep from giving up _all_ his control. He'd told himself he _wanted_ to, that if it had been possible to change back into an angel, he would have let it happen. More than once since then, he had admitted to himself the weight of his fear about going through another unpredictable transformation. More than once, he'd told himself he'd been foolish to entertain the idea in the first place: if it had worked, he wouldn't have been free. It would have meant being under the thumb of Heaven again. Ultimately, it would have meant another Fall. Pointless.

And he'd tried anyway. By now, Crowley had had a lot of time to think about it. He'd had a chance to be more disappointed in himself for trying, as well as for not trying hard enough. Either failure was a sign of pathetic desperation, stupidity, cowardice, a lack of conviction — any of those, or all of them, depending on the century, or what else was nagging at him that day.

This time, he was going to let his body give in completely to whatever happened. There was something about this, still, that drew him in. If it wasn't the potential to become an angel again... then what?

His breaths were deep and rhythmic, slow so far, gradually getting faster. If he stopped breathing, he might fully lose control of his body.

He stopped breathing.

His body, the simple thing, started to panic. Crowley held his resolve, rolled his hips against the solid shape of Gabriel's thigh, and felt snakeskin ripple down his legs. The tips of his hair were curling against the center of his back. He _had_ been beautiful once, hadn't he? The same thought had occurred in Edessa. At the time, in the shadows of night, it had been cut through with shame and regret. Now...

Now he was naked and bathed in light, bright red curls spilling over his pale shoulders, and an angel was whispering fervent prayers into his skin. Fuck once; Crowley felt beautiful _now_. And this was Gabriel. If his prayers did this to Crowley, then what might happen under the influence of another angel? _Would_ he...?

Crowley's lungs were still struggling to pull air in, and he was still fighting them, small choking noises starting to gurgle at the back of his throat. His head was thrown back, his chest arched against Gabriel's mouth, and Gabriel's voice was rising in volume as his fingers tightened and pulled sharply. With nothing but the feeling of a warm body underneath him, Crowley imagined that his fingers were tangled up in blonde hair, that the eyes watching him weren't violet, but sky-blue. A fully-formed fantasy flashed across his thoughts: Aziraphale would do this, but it wouldn't be with the intent to _change_ Crowley, to make him into something he'd stopped being eons ago. He would only whisper the goodness and beauty he saw in Crowley as he was, and Crowley would _let_ _him;_ by Satan or God or whomever, he'd let him. Crowley's orgasm hit him like a stab in the belly, his whole body shivered with it, and his wings unfolded themselves and stretched to either side of the bed.

When he looked down, Gabriel's lips were still moving, his voice having diminished, for the moment, below a whisper. There was pleading in his eyes; he was so desperate to return to the way things had been, so inflexible against a changing universe. Crowley could have spat in his face. Instead, he pressed gently at the back of Gabriel's head, encouraging Gabriel to continue praying against his neck.

Crowley relaxed his wings, allowing the tips to fall over either side of the bed, and took his chance to really survey the room. The familiar dimensions and placement of the furniture. The view out the windows, which was still only sky. Where in Heaven could one not _see_ Heaven?

How long had they been at it in Edessa? Long enough for Crowley to climax four, maybe five times. And he'd tried to beg Her to take him back in his own mind. Meanwhile, now... while he had surrendered his body to the experience, he hadn't spared a thought in his mind toward Her.

Well... why should he? If God was actually looking for repentance, She wasn't going to find it here. If She needed him to beg in order to be changed, She'd know anything he thought for insincerity. For once in a very long time, Crowley was content with what he had. Surely that had something, _something_ to do with who and what he was. Why on Earth, why on anywhere, would he try and be something different?

"Why do you even want me back?" He lifted his chin, and sucked in a breath as a particularly sharp plea cut across his throat. "You hate me."

"I saw the potential for redemption in you then." Gabriel breathed the words against the underside of Crowley's jaw. His hands found the joints of Crowley's wings and cupped them, caressed the skin where they met his back. "I see it now. I keep to my faith.”

"Angels..." Crowley sneered. "Always keeping to the way things are, 'cause reasons."

"You asked for this."

Gabriel had pulled back, straightened up far enough to look Crowley in the face. Crowley looked down.

"I asked you to show me the love of Heaven. And I've seen enough of it. I'm done with this."

"We’ve barely started."

”Yep," Crowley said. "And I’m already certain it’s not gonna work.”

Gabriel was giving him a very _are-you-serious_ face, looking up at Crowley through the tops of his eyes. “If this is nothing?" His hands stroked Crowley's wing joints, pressed down the elongated landscape of his back. "Why does your vessel come alive like this?”

"I dunno," Crowley shrugged, exasperated. If he'd had any more than the two eyes, they all would have rolled. "Has literally any other demon in history tried this? Ever? I'm not sure it's doing anything except inspiring me to shapeshift and getting me off."

"No,” Gabriel insisted. “God's love is changing you."

Crowley wrinkled his nose. "Or I just have a kink." Yeah — that sounded much more likely. He looked down, and realized — he might not be the only one. "What about you... Archangel Gabriel?” Crowley gripped Gabriel's shoulders and gave a slow grind of his hips, against the wet spot his last climax had left. “Does it rev your engine, thinking you might redeem me?"

"Now you're being gross." Gabriel frowned, his tone scolding. "I want my friend back."

Gabriel wanted his friend back. _Gabriel_ wanted _his_ friend back, and that meant Crowley had to _change._ Crowley's hands were shoving their bodies apart before he'd barely had the thought. He clamored back onto the pillows, and spat through his teeth: "If you wanted a friend, you could've come and found me. Anytime. I was right there on Earth."

" _Fallen_ on Earth," Gabriel insisted. He was looking at Crowley like Crowley was some sort of wild animal. "That's all the other angels ever saw in you. You're something different now. I can feel it. I can bring you back to the light, Ra—"

" _Crowley._ Is my name. You say the other one again, we're done talking. Forever." Crowley climbed over the side of the mattress. By the time his bare feet hit the floor, he was clothed, dark fabric draped over both of his shoulders and between his wing joints. He walked around to the foot of the bed, examining the room from different angles, and stopped in the spot where Gabriel had started. _Aha._

"Nice try with the production value," he concluded, and snapped his fingers. The Heavenly glamour Gabriel had cast over the room fell away, revealing the grey walls of Crowley's bedroom. "Now get the _fuck_ out of my flat."

* * *

Crowley sat on his throne, staring through the wall while his thoughts wandered and his anger drained slowly away, aided by his work with the half-empty bottle of wine on the desk. His body had already relaxed into a more human shape. He'd banished his wings back to wherever they were when he wasn't showing them off. Swapped the robes for leather trousers and a black shirt that showed off a sharp V of bare sternum. The hair, though...

His hair hadn't been this long for centuries, nor this wavy. Crowley drew the lot of it away from the back of his neck and over one shoulder. His scalp ached slightly, but the pain was already starting to fade. They hadn't gone on long enough to leave anything lingering.

Every other time he and Gabriel had met and parted again, there'd been a sense of incompleteness, of inadequacy. A feeling of weakness, like he wasn't committed enough to being a demon, or repentant enough to become an angel. But Gabriel had been accidentally right about one thing: things were different now. Crowley didn't have to be either. Not anymore.

Crowley smoothed his hands over the top of his head one more time. When he lowered them, his hair had organized itself into a crown braid that looped under the base of his skull, under which the rest of the tight waves were free to hang, all the way down to the small of Crowley's back. He snatched up the wine bottle, put his feet up on the desk, and tried to imagine Aziraphale's face when he first laid eyes on the new style.

Crowley could _, technically_ , wait to see it. But not for very long.

**Author's Note:**

> _Touch me, Midas_   
>  _make me part of your design_   
>  _none to guide us_   
>  _I feel fear for the very last time_


End file.
